I would be extremely careful about these claims from Ukrainian officials. They showed before that they are capable of anything to have attention of mainstream press and western countries. It’s propaganda on both ends - Russian and Ukrainian.
Both propagandas are bad. They obviously want to make themselves look better than the other and the other as bad as it gets. This kind of information war is a basic instrument in wars since Americans invented it.
To your question that both are bad… Russian are killing people which is bad but to say that Ukrainian soldiers are good and that Ukrainians were saint nation before the war is a false statement as well.
From my point of view Ukraine is just a victim of global politics. To blame only Russia for this development is not fair cause Americans pushed them to this.
When USA attacked Iraq everyone was praising them and not placing sanctions against them even though that all reasons they provided to attack were intentionally falsified. And millions of civilians died and were tortured. But it’s middle east so why would west care, right?!
Russia and the US are trying to do the exact same thing to Eastern Europe right now. Just because the US claims “this is for democracy” doesn’t make it better. Also, the US recognizes Taiwan as an island beloning to China, they just hold informal agreements for the sake of military and tech, like chips or manufacturing.
Propaganda is “bad” but that does not mean everything is of equal weight. Killing people is bad but that doesn’t mean killing unprovoked is equal to killing in self defense. That doesn’t mean they’re even similar.
You’re the type of idiot that would be living in Africa during the 1910s holding arguments about whether Germany or the US is better, while refusing to let anyone speak up about them both being awful.
I wonder what everyone’s thoughts are on this. Personally I think Russia is spent and would need at least 5 years to train new troops, build new tanks, etc to the point of waging an effective war at any scale, let alone against NATO. Could easily be 10 with continued sanctions. By that time Putin could easily be dead and I see nothing structural that could lead to the next Russian President wanting to wage a war. Just have to wait out Putin with sanctions.
You are right in that way, but Russia is now in war economy and that can’t stop quickly. They will gain weapons and troops and the ability to deploy them effectively. They won’t attack NATO directly, but they didn’t attack Ukraine directly either, at first. First they sent unmarked troops to stir troubles, then marked “to solve” the troubles. They are more than able to sustain paramilitary groups in various border areas for decades. No such activity will be enough to create an article 5 situation and all of it will degrade NATO and resolve of the members.
Only if NATO agrees it happened. Nations just have to find pretext or plausible deniability to avoid escalation -- which they will when the alternative is inevitably nuclear escalation.
Russia is proving that the systems of NATO are highly vulnerable to a bad faith and cynical actor's aggression. NATO needs to change to prove Russia wrong. And the USGOP, among others, are proving him highly right.
How? They will deny it, there will be no marks. It will start gradually. Likely NATO nations wont support article 5, really a nuclear war, if they think there are only some small border skirmishes on an unimportant border.
And that is it. This will bring divide and distrust into nato. That’s exactly what Russia wants. They don’t want to occupy Poland, they know that’s impossible.
Because it doesn’t matter if Russia admits it or not.
If "unknown“ saboteurs are doing things aligned with Russian interests in areas of Russian interest it won’t take long until western intelligence determines that Russia is sending military and covert ops into a nato country‘s territory. That is a clear act of aggression.
Simply denying that they are doing it isn’t worth shit behind the scenes.
That by itself not. But doing it slowly by creating arming and supporting paramilitary groups can absolutely work. No doubt. Getting rid of NATO is their primary goal. Our at least reducing effectiveness.
Europe’s main worry is that the USA pulls out of NATO. Without the USA, NATO becomes a lot weaker and may have issues projecting power on Europe’s frontier for an extended period of time.
And as we’ve seen with Ukraine, Putin seems to have a decently firm grasp of Russia.
I always find this odd that people think that European Nato is weak and couldn’t take on Russia, especially when one of the poorest countries in Europe (Ukraine) fought them into a stalemate.
It doesn’t matter if Europe only NATO is weak or not. It would look weak. For better or worse the US is at least half it not more of NATO’s effective force. The loss would embolden Russia and friends.
Ukraine has also had significant support from NATO, both in materiel and in intelligence. A lot of that support came from the USA and a lot of the means to refill strategic reserves are mainly American owned and run.
A European only NATO has diminished command and control capabilities and defense industry.
Wasn’t there already a standard of learning about rifles in Russian schools? I’ve seen a few videos like this https://youtu.be/LrxjYfl05ek?si=P-lKovi4bag_YJGG where they’re field stripping AK74s .
ukrinform.net
Top